On the Diselectrification of Metals and other Bodies by Light

Abstract

REFERRING to a footnote on page 135 of NATURE, June 7, Messrs. Elster and Geitel have been good enough to call my attention to a great deal of work done by them in the same direction and published in recent numbers of Wiedemann's Annalen. The most important statement about it is that they had observed the photoelectric power of fluorescent minerals and the electrical activity of sunlight, and had worked for some time at the influence of these facts on atmospheric electrification; the idea that atmospheric electricity was thus caused (by the discharging action of sunlight) having been already mooted apparently by von Bezold and Arrhenius.